Moments after Gordon Brown had sat down to cheers from Labour backbenchers, Mr Hague joked: "You are like the thief who steals someone's car and comes back the next day to return the hubcaps. That is the story of your five Budgets."

To jeers from the Labour backbenches, he claimed Gordon Brown had brought in 45 stealth taxes since 1997.

Mr Hague said: "The Labour benches can be fooled all of the time  they cheer in ignorance."

The Tory leader aid the country had the lowest increase in disposable income "for a generation" from a government with the "highest increase in disposable promises.

"All this from a government that said it had no plans to increase taxes at all."

He also claimed there were huge raises in council taxes and even a £10 VAT charge on spectacles.

On business, he said the government are "steadily destroying Britain's competitive advantage".

He added: "The chancellor would have done better to tackle business burdens head on, to stop forcing businesses to act as unpaid tax and benefit administrators, to have scrapped the IR35 tax that will drive people oversees.

"He should have set British business free to compete.

"These election tax cuts are for a limited period only.

"He could have given the people's surplus to people.

"It is a Budget for a limited period only and, given the chance, we know he would take it all back.

"Only this side of the House will give people back their money.

"Only the Conservatives will tax less and look after people's money."

Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy accused the chancellor of devoting five times as much financial priority to reducing tax as investing in health and education.

The Budget had to be seen in the context of rising class sizes, longer hospital waiting lists, fewer police, more violent crime, immobilised public transport and a record number of winter deaths among pensioners, he added.

"Why had the chancellor not taken the chance to follow the lead of the Scottish parliament in scrapping student tuition fees and providing free personal care for the elderly?

"The country is going to have a real chance for real change in probably just a few weeks' time. That's called not a pre-election over-hyped Budget it's called an honest, rational, sincere Liberal Democrat alternative."